AMD R600 Architecture and GPU Analysis - Page 1

Published on 14th May 2007, written by Rys for Consumer Graphics - Last updated: 14th May 2007

Introduction

Given everything surrounding the current
graphics world at the time of writing -- with big highlights that
include the recent AMD/ATI merger, the introduction of a new
programming shading model via DirectX, NVIDIA's introduction of G80,
real-time graphics hardware in the new generation of consoles, and
Intel's intent to come back to discrete -- the speculation and
anticipation for AMD's next generation of Radeon hardware has reached
levels never seen before. 4 years in the making by a team of some 300
engineers, the chip takes the best bits of R5 and Xenos, along with new
technology, to create their next architecture.

How
it performs, and how it slides in to the big graphics picture, means
the base architecture and its derivative implementations will have an
impact on the industry that will be felt a long time from launch day.
If you're not excited about what we're about to explain and go over in
the following pages, you haven't been paying attention to the state of
the GPU union over the last year and a half, since we live in the most
exciting graphics-related times since Voodoo Graphics blazed its
real-time, mass-market consumer trail.

The
engineers at the new AMD Graphics Products Group have been beavering
away for the last few years on what they call their 2nd generation
unified shader architecture. Based in part on what you can find today
in the Xenos GPU inside the Xbox 360 console, AMD's D3D10 compliant
hardware has been a long time coming. Obviously delayed and with
product family teething troubles, R600, RV610 and RV630 -- the first
implementations of the new architecture -- break cover today for the
first time, at least officially!

We'll
let you know the architecture basics first, before diving in for closer
looks at some of the bigger things the architecture and the
implementing GPUs do. As with our G80 analysis, we split things in to
three, covering architecture in this piece, before looking at image
quality and performance in subsequent articles, to divide things up
into manageable chunks for us to create and you to consume.

AMD
have embargoed performance analysis of RV610 and RV630 until next
month, but we're allowed to talk about those GPUs in terms of
architecture and their board-level implementations, so we'll do that
later today, after our look at R600, the father of the family. Tank
once said, "Damn, it's a very exciting time". Too true, Tank, too true.
He also said shortly afterwards, "We got a lot to do, let's get to it".
We'll heed his sage advice.